


Afterimages

by SecretlyWritingFanfic



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, M/M, Mid-Reichenbach, POV Sherlock Holmes, Pining, Reactions to stills and artwork, Season/Series 02, Unrequited, all the pain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 06:43:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11754243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretlyWritingFanfic/pseuds/SecretlyWritingFanfic
Summary: He had to watch.He made himself watch.





	1. The Fool

**Author's Note:**

> Short works inspired by stills and artwork from the BBC series Sherlock.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock.

  
  
  
The hardest part of the entire endeavor was that Sherlock was forced to look into John’s grieving face as the crowd pulled him away. The drugs helped some, and he found a reserve of sadness that let him believe he actually was dead, therefore unable to leap up, take John sharply by an elbow and guide him away to be held a while until the anger, sadness, mourning, and other unhappinesses  died away.   
  
He had to watch.   
He made himself watch.   
  
“ _You’ve done this as well, Holmes,_ ” his fierce mind hissed, “ _You composed this symphony. You’ll see it played out._ ”  
  
He could not look away as those many complicit hands held John back. He could not blink back the damp sting when Watson’s warm fingers took hold – heavy and hopeful – of his wrist and found no pulse.   
  
Sherlock and Molly had worked hard to make sure the only man who mattered would never feel that light, sad flutter. Yet, underneath the narcotic coma and slowed heart, he hoped.   
  
_See through this John. See through the circus and undo this – we’ll survive somehow when my cover is blown and the wolves come baying. Mycroft can – or Lestrade – we could…_  
  
“He’s my friend – I’m a doctor. He’s my – “  
John, a warm-blooded mortal and blinded by sudden grief, went limp. Unable to manage the thing before him, he gave up control and allowed himself to be pulled back.   
Sherlock had been glad then for the EMTs who lifted his body onto the gurney and the moments lost in a flurry of movement that allowed him to close his eyes.   
  
The tears well and truly burned.


	2. The World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly.

“Anything." 

It could be my name, so long as he’ll say it. 

For all the things that Sherlock sees, I seem to always be the last - but it’s fine. It has to be. He can’t see what I see - that he’s in love, and that even if it isn’t me, I’ll do what I can in my own way to protect that.  
  
His mind, his cases, John. 

Because he is precious—unlike anything I ever held, or anyone who ever walked through the doors of Bart’s. 

Coffee? I can. 

Help? Always. 

But then, he did see me, finally. He stood in my lab and looked at me as if I’d come in to being before his eyes. It was like standing in full sun after a winter in the dark. 

It was brilliant and frightening and there, under his stare, I realised I’d been in his field of view since the very beginning.


	3. The Hanged Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock.

  


The things he did to keep them safe. 

The midnight chases, the guns. The drugs, the knives. The explosives and the men who secured C4 putty to the chest of the only heart he'd ever have. 

All of it.

Every death was for them - to keep them safe- and they'd never even know. 

That it was to keep them safe from himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork by [Cap'n Blowfish.](http://cpnblowfish.tumblr.com)


	4. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John.

   
  
  
It would play forever behind his eyes.   
The end.   
  
When he woke in the night. When a joke was shouted over a pub table. When he met Mrs Hudson for tea or found himself in a taxi that somehow wound past the side entrance (never, ever the street side) of Barts.  
  
It had been his own end, too. Hadn't it? The last bit of Dr John Watson who had never seen war. The final crumb of an optimist who had pinched together two arteries in a hemorrhaging boy during one hellish overnight as a 20-something resident and thought that was the worst he'd see.   
  
Oh, it could be so much worse.  
  
Sherlock had tipped over the lip of the roof, fallen silently, arms winging through cold London air. He'd met the path with what John knew to be a crunch of shredding femur, splintering tibs and fib, ribs popping, vertebrae compacting and severing nerves. The end of a body, the exposure of ribboned white ligaments.   
  
The end of his friend. His best friend.  
  
As many times as he would wake, shower, dress, drink, eat, sleep. For all the days after that  _only_  one, he would live the fall again and again.


	5. The Magician

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim.

  
Jim had never gone to ground so long in his life. He didn't mind a decent vanishing act so long as it was dramatic; but really now.   
  
Sherlock hadn't surfaced in over a year, and there was a small voice in the depths of his very dark soul that asked Jim if he really had won. He liked a good trick, but was so accustomed to being the one performing that the notion of another star on his stage stealing the spotlight was... reprehensible.   
  
Worth a murder (if only Seb could find the bastard).  
  
So he stayed low.  
  
Went lower.  
  
Left the bespoke lines, soft wool, and polished sharpness high above on Bart's rooftop with the burst blood squibs and blank-loaded Browning (a detail, so crucial and lovely) and waited.  
  
He'd never gone to ground so long, but the game was good. He could wait longer.  
  
Not much.  
  
But a bit.  
  
Then he would start finding ways to bring Sherlock Holmes back on stage - starting with knives.  
  
And John Watson.


	6. Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock.

Up on the roof, with Moriarty’s body cooling behind him, Sherlock had been convinced he could brazen though Lazarus and jump without a second thought.  
  
“Oh God.”  
  
But John arrived, and he found holding to his plan harder than he realised. Listening to his blogger plead more and more desperately to stop, come down, not do this, Sherlock felt a sharpness in his throat that had nothing to do with the cold rooftop wind.The script was exact, the call was being recorded. But the tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks… they were unplanned.  
  
His chest constricted, his hands tightened on the phone. Searching for something (anything) that could signal to John that it would all be alright, adrenaline coursing even over the pounding of his blood, Sherlock tried.God, he tried.  
  
“It’s a trick. Just a magic trick.”  
  
“No. Alright? Stop it now.”  
  
The ground was getting farther and farther away. John Watson was a brilliant, shattering beacon.  
  
“Goodbye John.”  
  
On the tarmac, with the buzz and drone of airfield business all around, he faced John again - another last moment - pressing his lips together firmly. The was banter, awkward in the face of a parting they could not undo. A change they could not survive.  
  
“How long?”  
  
“Who knows.”  
  
And tears again rimmed his eyes as he searched for the right words. The real words.  
  
“John, there’s something I should say. I meant to say always and then never have… since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.”  
  
No more goodbyes. No more begging. No more false lines to push between them. But John looked away, and he knew (he was Sherlock Holmes, after all) by the hunch of shoulders and small, firm line of mouth that John Watson was steeling himself for a truth they both knew, but would be forced to live without the rest of their lives. Throat tight, eyes swimming, Sherlock searched again for the lifeline - the hint that somehow it would all be alright. They would find a way to go on, even if it must be without each other.  
  
“Sherlock is actually a girl’s name.”  
  
The laughter that followed chased his tears back. When their hands folded together it was again the very best of times.  
  
On the plane, alone, he allowed himself to cry.


End file.
